For a record label, investing in an unknown artist is a high risk business. Most of the artists will fail to make the anticipated “break through”. However, when one does succeed, the return of investment far exceeds the initial cost. Locating artists with high probability of future success is thus important for the music industry. There is therefore a great interest in a technique for automatically identifying promising artists at very early stages of their professional life, often before they are noticed by a major record company in the national level.
Local popularity of an emerging artist is an important factor for consideration when looking for a new, previously unknown artists. Artists that are extremely popular in their hometown area have higher potential to make a breakthrough in the national level. By way of example, the local popularity will come as a result of performances in the artist's hometown that will create a word of mouth ripple that will send people to download the artist's songs from a file-sharing application or to listen to the artist's clips on YouTube.
There is therefore a need for simple and reliable means to detect emerging artists.